As soon as I had learned to speak the language a little, I
became greatly interested in the people and the system of government.

I found that the nation had at first tried universal
suffrage pure and simple, but had thrown that form aside because the result was
not satisfactory.It had seemed to
deliver all power into the hands of the ignorant and non-tax-paying classes;
and of a necessity the responsible offices were filled from these classes also.

A remedy was sought.The people believed they had found it; not in the destruction of
universal suffrage, but in the enlargement of it.It was an odd idea, and ingenious.You must understand,
the constitution gave every man a vote; therefore that vote was a vested right,
and could not be taken away.But the
constitution did not say that certain individuals might not be given two votes,
or ten!So an amendatory clause was
inserted in a quiet way; a clause which authorised the enlargement of the
suffrage in certain cases to be specified by statute.To offer to "limit" the suffrage
might have made instant trouble; the offer to "enlarge" it had a
pleasant aspect.But of course the
newspapers soon began to suspect; and then out they came!It was found, however, that for once--and for
the first time in the history of the republic --property, character, and
intellect were able to wield a political influence; for once, money, virtue,
and intelligence took a vital and a united interest in a political question;
for once these powers went to the "primaries" in strong force; for
once the best men in the nation were put forward as candidates for that
parliament whose business it should be to enlarge the suffrage.The weightiest half of the press quickly
joined forces with the new movement, and left the other half to rail about the
proposed "destruction of the liberties" of the bottom layer of
society, the hitherto governing class of the community.

The victory was complete.The new law was framed and passed.Under it every citizen, howsoever poor or ignorant, possessed one vote,
so universal suffrage still reigned; but if a man possessed a good
common-school education and no money, he had two votes; a high-school education
gave him four; if he had property like wise, to the value of three thousand
'sacos,' he wielded one more vote; for every fifty thousand 'sacos' a man added
to his property, he was entitled to another vote; a university education
entitled a man to nine votes, even though he owned no property.Therefore, learning being more prevalent and
more easily acquired than riches, educated men became a wholesome check upon
wealthy men, since they could outvote them.Learning goes usually with uprightness, broad views, and humanity; so
the learned voters, possessing the balance of power, became the vigilant and
efficient protectors of the great lower rank of society.

And now a curious thing developed itself--a sort of
emulation, whose object was voting power!Whereas formerly a man was honored only according to the amount of money
he possessed, his grandeur was measured now by the number of votes he
wielded.A man with only one vote was
conspicuously respectful to his neighbor who possessed three.And if he was a man above the common-place,
he was as conspicuously energetic in his determination to acquire three for
himself.This spirit of emulation
invaded all ranks.Votes based upon
capital were commonly called "mortal" votes, because they could be
lost; those based upon learning were called "immortal," because they
were permanent, and because of their customarily imperishable character they
were naturally more valued than the other sort.I say "customarily" for the reason that these votes were not
absolutely imperishable, since insanity could suspend them.

Under this system, gambling and
speculation almost ceased in the republic.A man honoured as the possessor of great
voting power could not afford to risk the loss of it upon a doubtful chance.

It was curious to observe the manners and customs which the
enlargement plan produced.Walking the
street with a friend one day he delivered a careless bow to a passer-by, and
then remarked that that person possessed only one vote and would probably never
earn another; he was more respectful to the next acquaintance he met; he
explained that this salute was a four-vote bow.I tried to "average" the importance of the people he accosted
after that, by the-nature of his bows, but my success was only partial, because
of the somewhat greater homage paid to the immortals than to the mortals.My friend explained.He said there was no law to regulate this
thing, except that most powerful of all laws, custom.Custom had created these varying bows, and in
time they had become easy and natural.At this moment he delivered himself of a very profound salute, and then
said, "Now there's a man who began life as a shoemaker's apprentice, and
without education; now he swings twenty-two mortal votes and two immortal ones;
he expects to pass a high-school examination this year and climb a couple of
votes higher among the immortals; mighty valuable citizen."

By and by my friend met a venerable personage, and not only
made him a most elaborate bow, but also took off his hat.I took off mine, too, with a mysterious
awe.I was beginning to be infected.

"What grandee is that?"

"That is our most illustrious astronomer.He hasn't any money, but is fearfully
learned.Nine immortals is his political
weight!He would swing a hundred and fifty
votes if our system were perfect."

"Is there any altitude of mere moneyed grandeur that
you take off your hat to?"

"No.Nine
immortal votes is the only power we uncover for that is, in civil life.Very great officials receive that mark of
homage, of course."

It was common to hear people admiringly mention men who had
begun life on the lower levels and in time achieved great voting-power.It was also common to hear youths planning a
future of ever so many votes for themselves.I heard shrewd mammas speak of certain young
men as good "catches" because they possessed such-and-such a number
of votes.I knew of more than one case
where an heiress was married to a youngster who had but one vote; the argument
being that he was gifted with such excellent parts that in time he would
acquire a good voting strength, and perhaps in the long run be able to outvote
his wife, if he had luck.

Competitive examinations were the rule and in all official
grades.I remarked that the questions
asked the candidates were wild, intricate, and often required a sort of
knowledge not needed in the office sought.

"Can a fool or an ignoramus answer them?" asked
the person I was talking with.

"Certainly not."

"Well, you will not find any fools or ignoramuses among
our officials."

I felt rather cornered, but made shift to say:

"But these questions cover a good deal more ground than
is necessary."

"No matter; if candidates can answer these it is
tolerably fair evidence that they can answer nearly any other question you
choose to ask them."

There were some things in Gondour which one could not shut
his eyes to. One was, that ignorance and incompetence
had no place in the government. Brains and property managed the state.A candidate for office must have marked
ability, education, and high character, or he stood no sort of chance of
election.If a hod-carrier possessed
these, he could succeed; but the mere fact that he was a hod-carrier could not
elect him, as in previous times.

It was now a very great honour to be in the parliament or in
office; under the old system such distinction had only brought suspicion upon a
man and made him a helpless mark for newspaper contempt and scurrility.
Officials did not need to steal now, their salaries being vast in comparison
with the pittances paid in the days when parliaments were created by
hod-carriers, who viewed official salaries from a hod-carrying point of view
and compelled that view to be respected by their obsequious servants.Justice was wisely and rigidly administered;
for a judge, after once reaching his place through the specified line of promotions,
was a permanency during good behaviour.He was not obliged to modify his judgments according to the effect they
might have upon the temper of a reigning political party.

The country was mainly governed by a ministry which went out
with the administration that created it.This was also the case with the chiefs of the great departments.Minor officials ascended to their several
positions through well-earned promotions, and not by a jump from gin-mills or
the needy families and friends of members of parliament. Good behaviour
measured their terms of office.

The head of the governments the Grand Caliph,
was elected for a term of twenty years.I questioned the wisdom of this.I was answered that he could do no harm, since the ministry and the
parliament governed the land, and he was liable to impeachment for
misconduct.This great office had twice
been ably filled by women, women as aptly fitted for it as some of the sceptred
queens of history.Members of the cabinet,
under many administrations, had been women.

I found that the pardoning power was lodged in a court of
pardons, consisting of several great judges.Under the old regime, this important power was vested in a single
official, and he usually took care to have a general jail delivery in time for
the next election.

I inquired about public schools.There were plenty of them,
and of free colleges too.I inquired
about compulsory education.This was
received with a smile, and the remark:

"When a man's child is able to make himself
powerful and honoured according to the amount of education he acquires, don't
you suppose that that parent will apply the compulsion himself?Our free schools and free colleges require no
law to fill them."

There was a loving pride of country about this person's way
of speaking which annoyed me.I had long
been unused to the sound of it in my own. The Gondour national airs were
forever dinning in my ears; therefore I was glad to leave that country and come
back to my dear native land, where one never hears that sort of music.

When I say that I never knew my austere father to be
enamoured of but one poem in all the long half century that he lived, persons
who knew him will easily believe me; when I say that I have never composed but
one poem in all the long third of a century that I have lived, persons who know
me will be sincerely grateful; and finally, when I say that the poem which I
composed was not the one which my father was enamoured of, persons who may have
known us both will not need to have this truth shot into them with a mountain howitzer
before they can receive it.My father
and I were always on the most distant terms when I was a boy--a sort of armed
neutrality so to speak.At irregular
intervals this neutrality was broken, and suffering ensued; but I will be
candid enough to say that the breaking and the suffering were always divided up
with strict impartiality between us--which is to say, my father did the
breaking, and I did the suffering.As a
general thing I was a backward, cautious, unadventurous boy; but I once jumped
off a two-story table; another time I gave an elephant a "plug" of
tobacco and retired without waiting for an answer; and still another time I
pretended to be talking in my sleep, and got off a portion of a very wretched
original conundrum in the hearing of my father.Let us not pry into the result; it was of no consequence to any one but
me.

But the poem I have referred to as attracting my father's
attention and achieving his favour was "Hiawatha."Some man who courted a sudden and awful death
presented him an early copy, and I never lost faith in my own senses until I
saw him sit down and go to reading it in cold blood--saw him open the book, and
heard him read these following lines, with the same inflectionless judicial
frigidity with which he always read his charge to the jury, or administered an
oath to a witness:

"Take your bow,

O
Hiawatha,

Take your arrows, jasper-headed,

Take your war-club, Puggawaugun,

And your mittens, Minjekahwan,

And your birch canoe for sailing,

And the oil of Mishe-Nama."

Presently my father took out of his breast pocket an
imposing "Warranty Deed," and fixed his eyes upon it and dropped into
meditation.I knew what it was.A Texan lady and gentleman had given my
half-brother, Orrin Johnson, a handsome property in a town in the North, in
gratitude to him for having saved their lives by an act of brilliant heroism.

By and by my father looked towards me and sighed.Then he said:

"If I had such a son as this poet, here were a subject worthier than the traditions of these
Indians."

"If you please, sir, where?"

"In this deed."

"Yes--in this very deed," said my father, throwing
it on the table. "There is more poetry, more romance, more sublimity, more splendid imagery hidden away in that homely document
than could be found in all the traditions of all the savages that live."

"Indeed, sir?Could I--could I get it out, sir?Could I compose the poem, sir, do you think?"

"You?"

I wilted.

Presently my father's face softened somewhat, and he said:

"Go and try.But
mind, curb folly.No poetry at the
expense of truth. Keep strictly to the facts."

I said I would, and bowed myself out, and went upstairs.

"Hiawatha" kept droning in my head--and so did my
father's remarks about the sublimity and romance hidden in my subject, and also
his injunction to beware of wasteful and exuberant fancy.I noticed, just here, that I had heedlessly
brought the deed away with me; now at this moment came to me one of those rare
moods of daring recklessness, such as I referred to a while ago.Without another thought, and in plain
defiance of the fact that I knew my father meant me to write the romantic story
of my half-brother's adventure and subsequent good fortune, I ventured to heed
merely the letter of his remarks and ignore their spirit.I took the stupid "Warranty Deed"
itself and chopped it up into Hiawathian blank verse without altering or
leaving out three words, and without transposing six.It required loads of courage to go downstairs
and face my father with my performance.I started three or four times before I finally got my pluck to where it
would stick.But at last I said I would
go down and read it to him if he threw me over the church for it. I stood up to
begin, and he told me to come closer.I
edged up a little, but still left as much neutral ground between us as I
thought he would stand.Then I
began.It would be useless for me to try
to tell what conflicting emotions expressed themselves upon his face, nor how
they grew more and more intense, as I proceeded; nor how a fell darkness
descended upon his countenance, and he began to gag and swallow, and his hands
began to work and twitch, as I reeled off line after line, with the strength
ebbing out of me, and my legs trembling under me:

THE STORY OF A GALLANT DEED

THIS INDENTURE, made the tenth

Day of November, in the year

Of our Lord one thousand eight

Hundred six-and-fifty,

Between Joanna S. E. Gray

And Philip Gray, her husband,

Of
SalemCity in the State

Of
Texas, of the
first part,

And O. B. Johnson, of the town

Of
Austin, ditto,
WITNESSETH:

That said party of first part,

For and in consideration

Of
the sum of Twenty Thousand

Dollars, lawful money of

The U. S.of Americay,

To
them in hand now paid by said

Party of the second part,

The due receipt whereof is here--

By
confessed and acknowledg-ed

Having Granted, Bargained, Sold, Remised,

Released and Aliened and Conveyed,

Confirmed, and by these presents do

Grant and Bargain, Sell, Remise,

Alien, Release, Convey, and Con--

Firm unto the said aforesaid

Party of the second part,

And to his heirs and assigns

Forever and ever ALL

That certain lot or parcel of

LAND situate in city of

Dunkirk, County
of Chautauqua,

And likewise furthermore in YorkState

Bounded and described, to-wit,

As
follows, herein, namely

BEGINNING at the distance of

A
hundred two-and-forty feet,

North-half-east, north-east-by north,

East-north-east and northerly

Of
the northerly line of Mulligan
street

On
the westerly line of Brannigan
street,

And running thence due northerly

On
Brannigan street200 feet,

Thence at right angles westerly,

North-west-by-west-and-west-half-west,

West-and-by-north, north-west-by-west,

About--

I kind of dodged, and the boot-jack broke the
looking-glass.I could have waited to
see what became of the other missiles if I had wanted to, but I took no
interest in such things.

In taking upon myself the burden of editing a department in
THE GALAXY magazine, I have been actuated by a conviction that I was needed,
almost imperatively, in this particular field of literature.I have long felt that while the magazine
literature of the day had much to recommend it, it yet lacked stability,
solidity, weight.It seemed plain to me
that too much space was given to poetry and romance, and not enough to
statistics and agriculture.This defect
it shall be my earnest endeavour to remedy.If I succeed, the simple consciousness that I have done a good deed will
be a sufficient reward.**--[**Together with salary.]

In this department of mine the public may always rely upon
finding exhaustive statistical tables concerning the finances of the country,
the ratio of births and deaths; the percentage of increase of population, etc.,
etc.--in a word, everything in the realm of statistics that can make existence
bright and beautiful.

Also, in my department will always be found elaborate
condensations of the Patent Office Reports, wherein a faithful endeavour will
at all times be made to strip the nutritious facts bare of that effulgence of
imagination and sublimity of diction which too often mar the excellence of
those great works.**--[** N. B.--No other magazine in
the country makes a specialty of the Patent Office Reports.]

In my department will always be found ample
excerpts from those able dissertations upon Political Economy which I have for
a long time been contributing to a great metropolitan journal, and which, for
reasons utterly incomprehensible to me, another party has chosen to usurp the
credit of composing.

And, finally, I call attention with pride to the fact that
in my department of the magazine the farmer will always find full market
reports, and also complete instructions about farming, even from the grafting
of the seed to the harrowing of the matured crop.I shall throw a pathos
into the subject of Agriculture that will surprise and delight the world.

Such is my programme; and I am persuaded that by adhering to
it with fidelity I shall succeed in materially changing the character of this
magazine.Therefore I am emboldened to
ask the assistance and encouragement of all whose sympathies are with Progress
and Reform.

In the other departments of the magazine will be found
poetry, tales, and other frothy trifles, and to these the reader can turn for
relaxation from time to time, and thus guard against
overstraining the powers of his mind.

M. T.

P. S.--1.I have not
sold out of the "Buffalo Express," and shall not; neither shall I
stop writing for it.This remark seems
necessary in a business point of view.

2.These MEMORANDA
are not a "humorous" department.I would not conduct an exclusively and professedly humorous department
for any one.I would always prefer to
have the privilege of printing a serious and sensible remark, in case one
occurred to me, without the reader's feeling obliged to consider himself outraged.We
cannot keep the same mood day after day.I am liable, some day, to want to print my opinion on jurisprudence, or
Homeric poetry, or international law, and I shall do it.It will be of small consequence to me whether
the reader survive or not.I shall never go straining after jokes when
in a cheerless mood, so long as the unhackneyed subject of international law is
open to me. I will leave all that straining to people who edit professedly and
inexorably "humorous" departments and publications.

3.I have chosen the
general title of MEMORANDA for this department because it is plain and simple,
and makes no fraudulent promises.I can
print under it statistics, hotel arrivals, or anything that comes handy,
without violating faith with the reader.

4.Puns cannot be
allowed a place in this department.Inoffensive ignorance, benignant stupidity, and unostentatious
imbecility will always be welcomed and cheerfully accorded a corner, and even
the feeblest humour will be admitted, when we can do no better; but no
circumstances, however dismal, will ever be considered a sufficient excuse for
the admission of that last--and saddest evidence of intellectual poverty, the
Pun.

In a recent issue of the "Independent," the Rev.
T. De Witt Talmage, of Brooklyn, has the
following utterance on the subject of "Smells":

I have a good
Christian friend who, if he sat in the front pew in

church, and a working man should enter the door at the other
end,

would smell him instantly.My friend is not to blame for the

sensitiveness of his nose, any more than you would flog a
pointer

for being keener on the scent than a stupid watch dog.The fact is,

if you, had all the churches free, by reason of the mixing
up of the

common people with the uncommon, you would keep one-half of

Christendom sick at their stomach.If you are going to kill the

church thus with bad smells, I will have nothing to do with
this

work of evangelization.

We have reason to believe that there will be labouring men
in heaven; and also a number of negroes, and
Esquimaux, and Terra del Fuegans, and Arabs, and a few Indians, and possibly
even some Spaniards and Portuguese.All
things are possible with God.We shall
have all these sorts of people in heaven; but, alas! in
getting them we shall lose the society of Dr. Talmage.Which is to say, we shall
lose the company of one who could give more real "tone" to celestial
society than any other contribution Brooklyn
could furnish.And what would
eternal happiness be without the Doctor?Blissful, unquestionably--we know that well enough but would it be
'distingue,' would it be 'recherche' without him?St. Matthew without stockings or sandals; St.
Jerome bare headed, and with a coarse brown blanket robe dragging the ground;
St. Sebastian with scarcely any raiment at all--these we should see, and should
enjoy seeing them; but would we not miss a spike-tailed coat and kids, and turn
away regretfully, and say to parties from the Orient: "These are well
enough, but you ought to see Talmage of Brooklyn."I fear me that in the better world we shall
not even have Dr. Talmage's "good Christian friend."

For if he were sitting under the glory of the Throne, and
the keeper of the keys admitted a Benjamin Franklin or other labouring man,
that "friend," with his fine natural powers infinitely augmented by
emancipation from hampering flesh, would detect him with a single sniff, and
immediately take his hat and ask to be excused.

To all outward seeming, the Rev. T. De Witt Talmage is of
the same material as that used in the construction of his early predecessors in
the ministry; and yet one feels that there must be a difference somewhere
between him and the Saviour's first disciples.It may be because here, in the nineteenth century, Dr. T.has had advantages
which Paul and Peter and the others could not and did not have.There was a lack of polish about them, and a
looseness of etiquette, and a want of exclusiveness, which one cannot help
noticing.They healed the very beggars,
and held intercourse with people of a villainous odour every day.If the subject of these remarks had been
chosen among the original Twelve Apostles, he would not have associated with
the rest, because he could not have stood the fishy smell of some of his
comrades who came from around the Sea of Galilee.He would have resigned his commission with
some such remark as he makes in the extract quoted above: "Master, if thou
art going to kill the church thus with bad smells, I will have nothing to do
with this work of evangelization."He is a disciple, and makes that remark to the Master; the only
difference is, that he makes it in the nineteenth
instead of the first century.

Is there a choir in Mr. T.'s church?And does it ever occur that they have no
better manners than to sing that hymn which is so suggestive of labourers and
mechanics:

"Son of the Carpenter!receive

This humble work of mine?"

Now, can it be possible that in a handful of centuries the
Christian character has fallen away from an imposing heroism that scorned even
the stake, the cross, and the axe, to a poor little effeminacy that withers and
wilts under an unsavoury smell?We are
not prepared to believe so, the reverend Doctor and his friend to the contrary
notwithstanding.

When I published a squib recently in which I said I was
going to edit an Agricultural Department in this magazine, I certainly did not
desire to deceive anybody.I had not the
remotest desire to play upon any one's confidence with a practical joke, for he
is a pitiful creature indeed who will degrade the dignity of his humanity to
the contriving of the witless inventions that go by that name.I purposely wrote the thing as absurdly and
as extravagantly as it could be written, in order to be sure and not mislead
hurried or heedless readers: for I spoke of launching a triumphal barge upon a
desert, and planting a tree of prosperity in a mine--a tree whose fragrance
should slake the thirst of the naked, and whose branches should spread abroad
till they washed the chorea of, etc., etc.I thought that manifest lunacy like that would protect the reader.But to make assurance absolute, and show that
I did not and could not seriously mean to attempt an Agricultural Department, I
stated distinctly in my postscript that I did not know anything about
Agriculture.But alas! right there is where I made my worst mistake--for that
remark seems to have recommended my proposed Agriculture more than anything
else.It lets a little light in on me,
and I fancy I perceive that the farmers feel a little bored, sometimes, by the
oracular profundity of agricultural editors who "know it all."In fact, one of my correspondents suggests
this (for that unhappy squib has deluged me with letters about potatoes, and
cabbages, and hominy, and vermicelli, and maccaroni, and all the other fruits,
cereals, and vegetables that ever grew on earth; and if I get done answering
questions about the best way of raising these things before I go raving crazy,
I shall be thankful, and shall never write obscurely for fun any more).

Shall I tell the real reason why I have unintentionally
succeeded in fooling so many people?It
is because some of them only read a little of the squib I wrote and jumped to
the conclusion that it was serious, and the rest did not read it at all, but
heard of my agricultural venture at second-hand.Those cases I could not guard against, of
course.To write a burlesque so wild
that its pretended facts will not be accepted in perfect good faith by
somebody, is, very nearly an impossible thing to do.It is because, in some instances, the reader
is a person who never tries to deceive anybody himself, and therefore is not
expecting any one to wantonly practise a deception upon him; and in this case
the only person dishonoured is the man who wrote the burlesque.In other instances the "nub" or
moral of the burlesque--if its object be to enforce a truth--escapes notice in
the superior glare of something in the body of the burlesque itself.And very often this "moral" is
tagged on at the bottom, and the reader, not knowing that it is the key of the
whole thing and the only important paragraph in the article, tranquilly turns
up his nose at it and leaves it unread.One can deliver a satire with telling force through the insidious medium
of a travesty, if he is careful not to overwhelm the satire with the extraneous
interest of the travesty, and so bury it from the reader's sight and leave him
a joked and defrauded victim, when the honest intent was to add to either his
knowledge or his wisdom.I have had a
deal of experience in burlesques and their unfortunate aptness to deceive the
public, and this is why I tried hard to make that agricultural one so broad and
so perfectly palpable that even a one-eyed potato could see it; and yet, as I
speak the solemn truth, it fooled one of the ablest agricultural editors in
America!

One of the saddest things that ever came under my notice
(said the banker's clerk) was there in Corning,
during the war.Dan Murphy enlisted as a
private, and fought very bravely.The
boys all liked him, and when a wound by and by weakened him down till carrying
a musket was too heavy work for him, they clubbed together and fixed him up as
a sutler.He made money then, and sent
it always to his wife to bank for him.She was a washer and ironer, and knew enough by hard experience to keep
money when she got it.She didn't waste
a penny.On the contrary, she began to
get miserly as her bank account grew.She grieved to part with a cent, poor creature, for twice in her
hard-working life she had known what it was to be hungry, cold, friendless,
sick, and without a dollar in the world, and she had a haunting dread of
suffering so again. Well, at last Dan died; and the boys, in testimony of their
esteem and respect for him, telegraphed to Mrs.Murphy to know if she would like to have him embalmed and sent home,
when you know the usual custom was to dump a poor devil like him into a shallow
hole, and then inform his friends what had become of him.Mrs.Murphy jumped to the conclusion that it would
only cost two or three dollars to embalm her dead husband, and so she
telegraphed "Yes."It was at
the "wake" that the bill for embalming arrived and was presented to
the widow.She uttered a wild, sad wail, that pierced every heart, and said:
"Sivinty-foive dollars for stoofhn' Dan, blister their sowls!Did thim divils suppose I was goin' to stairt
a Museim, that I'd be dalin' in such expinsive curiassities!"

Lately there appeared an item to this effect, and the same
went the customary universal round of the press:

A telegraph
station has just been established upon the traditional

site of the Garden of Eden.

As a companion to that, nothing fits so aptly and so
perfectly as this:

Brooklyn
has revived the knightly tournament of the Middle
Ages.

It is hard to tell which is the most startling, the idea of
that highest achievement of human genius and intelligence, the telegraph,
prating away about the practical concerns of the world's daily life in the
heart and home of ancient indolence, ignorance, and savagery, or the idea of
that happiest expression of the brag, vanity, and mock-heroics of our
ancestors, the "tournament," coming out of its grave to flaunt its tinsel
trumpery and perform its "chivalrous" absurdities in the high noon of
the nineteenth century, and under the patronage of a great, broad-awake city
and an advanced civilisation.

A "tournament" in Lynchburg
is a thing easily within the comprehension of the average mind; but no commonly
gifted person can conceive of such a spectacle in Brooklyn
without straining his powers.Brooklyn
is part and parcel of the city of New York, and
there is hardly romance enough in the entire metropolis to re-supply a Virginia "knight"
with "chivalry," in case he happened to run out of it.Let the reader calmly and dispassionately
picture to himself "lists" in Brooklyn; heralds, pursuivants, pages,
garter king-at-arms--in Brooklyn; the marshalling of the fantastic hosts of
"chivalry" in slashed doublets, velvet trunks, ruffles, and
plumes--in Brooklyn; mounted on omnibus and livery-stable patriarchs, promoted,
and referred to in cold blood as "steeds," "destriers," and
"chargers," and divested of their friendly, humble names these meek
old "Jims" and "Bobs" and "Charleys," and renamed
"Mohammed," "Bucephalus," and "Saladin"--in
Brooklyn; mounted thus, and armed with swords and shields and wooden lances,
and cased in paste board hauberks, morions, greaves, and gauntlets, and
addressed as "Sir" Smith, and "Sir" Jones, and bearing such
titled grandeurs as "The Disinherited Knight," the "Knight of
Shenandoah," the "Knight of the Blue Ridge," the "Knight of
Maryland," and the "Knight of the Secret Sorrow"--in Brooklyn;
and at the toot of the horn charging fiercely upon a helpless ring hung on a
post, and prodding at it in trepidly with their wooden sticks, and by and by
skewering it and cavorting back to the judges' stand covered with glory this in
Brooklyn; and each noble success like this duly and promptly announced by an
applauding toot from the herald's horn, and "the band playing three bars
of an old circus tune"--all in Brooklyn, in broad daylight.And let the reader remember, and also add to
his picture, as follows, to wit: when the show was all over, the party who had
shed the most blood and overturned and hacked to pieces the most knights, or at
least had prodded the most muffin-rings, was accorded the ancient privilege of
naming and crowning the Queen of Love and Beauty--which naming had in reality
been done for, him by the "cut-and-dried" process, and long in
advance, by a committee of ladies, but the crowning he did in person, though
suffering from loss of blood, and then was taken to the county hospital on a
shutter to have his wounds dressed--these curious things all occurring in
Brooklyn, and no longer ago than one or two yesterdays.It seems impossible, and yet it is true.

This was doubtless the first appearance of the
"tournament" up here among the rolling-mills and factories, and will
probably be the last.It will be well to
let it retire permanently to the rural districts of Virginia, where, it is
said, the fine mailed and plumed, noble-natured, maiden-rescuing,
wrong-redressing, adventure-seeking knight of romance is accepted and believed
in by the peasantry with pleasing simplicity, while they reject with scorn the
plain, unpolished verdict whereby history exposes him as a braggart, a ruffian,
a fantastic vagabond; and an ignoramus.

All romance aside, what shape would our admiration of the
heroes of Ashby de la Zouch be likely to take, in this
practical age, if those worthies were to rise up and come here and perform
again the chivalrous deeds of that famous passage of arms?Nothing but a New York jury and the insanity plea could
save them from hanging, from the amiable Bois-Guilbert and the pleasant
Front-de-Boeuf clear down to the nameless ruffians that entered the riot with
unpictured shields and did their first murder and acquired their first claim to
respect that day.The doings of the
so-called "chivalry" of the Middle Ages were absurd enough, even when
they were brutally and bloodily in earnest, and when their surroundings of
castles and donjons, savage landscapes and half-savage peoples, were in
keeping; but those doings gravely reproduced with tinsel decorations and mock
pageantry, by bucolic gentlemen with broomstick lances, and with muffin-rings
to represent the foe, and all in the midst of the refinement and dignity of a
carefully-developed modern civilisation, is absurdity gone crazy.

Now, for next exhibition, let us have a fine representation
of one of those chivalrous wholesale butcheries and burnings of Jewish women
and children, which the crusading heroes of romance used to indulge in in their
European homes, just before starting to the Holy Land,
to seize and take to their protection the Sepulchre and defend it from
"pollution."

As per advertisement in the
"Herald."A curious old relic indeed, as I had a good personal right to know.In a single instant of time, a long drawn
panorama of sights and scenes in the Holy Land flashed through my memory--town
and grove, desert, camp, and caravan clattering after each other and
disappearing, leaping me with a little of the surprised and dizzy feeling which
I have experienced at sundry times when a long express train has overtaken me
at some quiet curve and gone whizzing, car

by car, around the corner and out
of sight.In that prolific instant I saw
again all the country from the Sea of Galilee and Nazareth clear to Jerusalem,
and thence over the hills of Judea and through the Vale of Sharon to Joppa,
down by the ocean.Leaving out
unimportant stretches of country and details of incident, I saw and experienced
the following described matters and things.Immediately three years fell away from my age, and a vanished time was
restored to me September, 1867.It was a
flaming Oriental day--this one that had come up out of the past and brought
along its actors, its stage-properties, and scenic effects--and our party had
just ridden through the squalid hive of human vermin which still holds the
ancient Biblical name of Endor; I was bringing up the rear on my grave
four-dollar steed, who was about beginning to compose himself for his usual
noon nap.My! only fifteen minutes before
how the black, mangy, nine-tenths naked, ten-tenths filthy, ignorant, bigoted,
besotted, hungry, lazy, malignant, screeching, crowding, struggling, wailing,
begging, cursing, hateful spawn of the original Witch had swarmed out of the
caves in the rocks and the holes and crevices in the earth, and blocked our
horses' way, besieged us, threw themselves in the animals' path, clung to their
manes, saddle-furniture, and tails, asking, beseeching, demanding
"bucksheesh!bucksheesh!BUCKSHEESH!"We had rained small copper Turkish coins
among them, as fugitives fling coats and hats to pursuing wolves, and then had
spurred our way through as they stopped to scramble for the largess.I was fervently thankful when we had gotten
well up on the desolate hillside and outstripped them and left them jawing and
gesticulating in the rear.What a
tempest had seemingly gone roaring and crashing by me and left its dull
thunders pulsing in my ears!

I was in the rear, as I was saying.Our pack-mules and Arabs were far ahead, and
Dan, Jack, Moult, Davis,
Denny, Church, and Birch (these names will do as well as any to represent the
boys) were following close after them.As my horse nodded to rest, I heard a sort of panting behind me, and
turned and saw that a tawny youth from the village had overtaken me --a true remnant
and representative of his ancestress the Witch--a galvanised scurvy, wrought
into the human shape and garnished with ophthalmia and leprous scars--an airy
creature with an invisible shirt-front that reached below the pit of his
stomach, and no other clothing to speak of except a tobacco-pouch, an
ammunition-pocket, and a venerable gun, which was long enough to club any game
with that came within shooting distance, but far from efficient as an article
of dress.

I thought to myself, "Now this disease with a human
heart in it is going to shoot me."I smiled in derision at the idea of a Bedouin daring to touch off his
great-grandfather's rusty gun and getting his head blown off for his pains.But then it occurred to me, in simple
school-boy language, "Suppose he should take deliberate aim and 'haul off'
and fetch me with the butt-end of it?"There was wisdom in that view of it, and I stopped to parley.I found he was only a friendly villain who
wanted a trifle of bucksheesh, and after begging what he could get in that way, was perfectly willing to trade off everything he had
for more.I believe he would have parted
with his last shirt for bucksheesh if he had had one.He was smoking the "humbliest" pipe
I ever saw--a dingy, funnel-shaped, red-clay thing, streaked and grimed with
oil and tears of tobacco, and with all the different kinds of dirt there are,
and thirty per cent. of them peculiar and indigenous
to Endor and perdition.And rank?I never smelt anything like it.It withered a cactus that stood lifting its
prickly hands aloft beside the trail.It
even woke up my horse.I said I would
take that.It cost me a franc, a Russian
kopek, a brass button, and a slate pencil; and my spendthrift lavishness so won
upon the son of the desert that he passed over his pouch of most unspeakably
villainous tobacco to me as a free gift.What a pipe it was, to be sure!It had a rude brass-wire cover to it, and a little coarse iron chain
suspended from the bowl, with an iron splinter attached to loosen up the
tobacco and pick your teeth with.The
stem looked like the half of a slender walking-stick with the bark on.

I felt that this pipe had belonged to the original Witch of
Endor as soon as I saw it; and as soon as I smelt it, I knew it.Moreover, I asked the Arab cub in good
English if it was not so, and he answered in good Arabic that it was.I woke up my horse and went my way,
smoking.And presently I said to myself reflectively, "If there is anything that could
make a man deliberately assault a dying cripple, I reckon may be an unexpected
whiff from this pipe would do it."I smoked along till I found I was beginning to lie, and project murder,
and steal my own things out of one pocket and hide them in another; and then I
put up my treasure, took off my spurs and put them under my horse's tail, and
shortly came tearing through our caravan like a hurricane.

From that time forward, going to Jerusalem,
the Dead Sea, and the Jordan,
Bethany, Bethlehem,
and everywhere, I loafed contentedly in the rear and enjoyed my infamous pipe
and revelled in imaginary villany.But
at the end of two weeks we turned our faces toward the sea and journeyed over
the Judean hills, and through rocky defiles, and among the scenes that Samson
knew in his youth, and by and by we touched level ground just at night, and
trotted off cheerily over the plain of Sharon.It was perfectly jolly for three hours, and
we whites crowded along together, close after the chief Arab muleteer (all the
pack-animals and the other Arabs were miles in the rear), and we laughed, and
chatted, and argued hotly about Samson, and whether suicide was a sin or not,
since Paul speaks of Samson distinctly as being saved and in heaven.But by and by the night air, and the
duskiness, and the weariness of eight hours in the saddle, began to tell, and
conversation flagged and finally died out utterly.The squeak-squeaking of the saddles grew very
distinct; occasionally somebody sighed, or started to hum a tune and gave it
up; now and then a horse sneezed.These
things only emphasised the solemnity and the stillness.Everybody got so listless that for once I and
my dreamer found ourselves in the lead.It was a glad, new sensation, and I longed to keep the place
forevermore.Every little stir in the
dingy cavalcade behind made me nervous.Davis and I were riding side by side, right after the Arab.About 11 o'clock it had become really chilly,
and the dozing boys roused up and began to inquire how far it was to Ramlah
yet, and to demand that the Arab hurry along faster.I gave it up then, and my heart sank within
me, because of course they would come up to scold the Arab.I knew I had to take the rear again.In my sorrow I unconsciously took to my pipe,
my only comfort.As I touched the match
to it the whole company came lumbering up and crowding my horse's rump and
flanks.A whiff of smoke drifted back
over my shoulder, and--

"The suffering Moses!"

"Whew!"

"By George, who opened that graveyard?"

"Boys, that Arab's been
swallowing something dead!"

Right away there was a gap behind us.Whiff after whiff sailed airily back, and each one widened the breach.Within fifteen seconds the barking, and
gasping, and sneezing, and coughing of the boys, and their angry abuse of the
Arab guide, had dwindled to a murmur, and Davis and I were alone with the
leader.Davis did not know what the matter was, and
don't to this day.Occasionally he
caught a faint film of the smoke and fell to scolding at the Arab and wondering
how long he had been decaying in that way. Our boys kept on dropping back further and
further, till at last they were only in hearing, not in sight.And every time they started gingerly forward
to reconnoitre or shoot the Arab, as they proposed to do--I let them get within
good fair range of my relic (she would carry seventy yards with wonderful
precision), and then wafted a whiff among them that sent them gasping and
strangling to the rear again. I kept my gun well charged and ready, and twice
within the hour I decoyed the boys right up to my horse's
tail, and then with one malarious blast emptied the saddles, almost.I never heard an Arab abused so in my life.
He really owed his preservation to me, because for one entire hour I stood
between him and certain death.The boys
would have killed him if they could have got by me.

By and by, when the company were far in the rear, I put away
my pipe --I was getting fearfully dry and crisp about the gills and rather
blown with good diligent work--and spurred my animated trance up alongside the
Arab and stopped him and asked for water.He unslung his little gourd-shaped earthenware jug, and I put it under
my moustache and took a long, glorious, satisfying draught.I was going to scour the mouth of the jug a
little, but I saw that I had brought the whole train together once more by my
delay, and that they were all anxious to drink too--and would have been long
ago if the Arab had not pretended that he was out of water. So I hastened to
pass the vessel to Davis.He took a mouthful, and never said a word, but
climbed off his horse and lay down calmly in the road. I felt sorry for Davis.It was too late now, though, and Dan was
drinking.Dan got down too, and hunted
for a soft place.I thought I heard Dan
say, "That Arab's friends ought to keep him in alcohol or else take him
out and bury him somewhere."All
the boys took a drink and climbed down.It is not well to go into further particulars.Let us draw the curtain upon this act.

..............................

Well, now, to think that after three changing years I should
hear from that curious old relic again, and see Dan advertising it for sale for
the benefit of a benevolent object.Dan
is not treating that present right. I gave that pipe to him for a
keepsake.However, he probably finds
that it keeps away custom and interferes with business.It is the most convincing inanimate object in
all this part of the world, perhaps.Dan
and I were roommates in all that long "QuakerCity"
voyage, and whenever I desired to have a little season of privacy I used to
fire up on that pipe and persuade Dan to go out; and he seldom waited to change
his clothes, either.In about a quarter,
or from that to three-quarters of a minute, he would be propping up the
smoke-stack on the upper deck and cursing.I wonder how the faithful old relic is going to sell?

"Now that corpse [said the undertaker, patting the
folded hands of the deceased approvingly] was a brick--every way you took him
he was a brick. He was so real accommodating, and so modest-like and simple in
his last moments.Friends wanted
metallic burial case--nothing else would do. I couldn't get it.There warn't going to be time anybody could
see that. Corpse said never mind, shake him up some
kind of a box he could stretch out in comfortable, he warn't particular 'bout
the general style of it. Said he went more on room than style, any way, in the
last final container.Friends wanted a
silver door-plate on the coffin, signifying who he was and wher' he was
from.Now you know a fellow couldn't
roust out such a gaily thing as that in a little country town like this.What did corpse say?Corpse said, whitewash his old canoe and dob his address and general destination onto it with a
blacking brush and a stencil plate, long with a verse from some likely hymn or
other, and pint him for the tomb, and mark him C. O. D., and just let him skip
along.He warn't distressed any more
than you be--on the contrary just as carm and collected as a hearse-horse; said
he judged that wher' he was going to, a body would find it considerable better
to attract attention by a picturesque moral character than a natty burial case
with a swell doorplate on it.Splendid
man, he was.I'd druther do for a corpse
like that 'n any I've tackled in seven year.There's some satisfaction in buryin' a man like that.You feel that what you're doing is
appreciated. Lord bless you, so's he got planted before he sp'iled, he was
perfectly satisfied; said his relations meant well, perfectly well, but all
them preparations was bound to delay the thing more or less, and he didn't wish
to be kept layin' round.You never see
such a clear head as what he had--and so carm and so cool.Just a hunk of brains that is what he was. Perfectly awful.It
was a ripping distance from one end of that man's head to t'other.Often and over again he's had brain fever
a-raging in one place, and the rest of the pile didn't know anything about
it--didn't affect it any more than an Injun insurrection in Arizona affects the
Atlantic States.Well, the relations
they wanted a big funeral, but corpse said he was down on flummery--didn't want
any procession--fill the hearse full of mourners, and get out a stern line and
tow him behind. He was the most down on style of any remains I ever
struck.A beautiful, simple-minded
creature--it was what he was, you can depend on that.He was just set on having things the way he
wanted them, and he took a solid comfort in laying his little plans.He had me measure him and take a whole raft
of directions; then he had a minister stand up behind a long box with a
tablecloth over it and read his funeral sermon, saying 'Angcore, angcore!' at
the good places, and making him scratch out every bit of brag about him, and
all the hifalutin; and then he made them trot out the choir so's he could help
them pick out the tunes for the occasion, and he got them to sing 'Pop Goes the
Weasel,' because he'd always liked that tune when he was downhearted, and
solemn music made him sad; and when they sung that with tears in their eyes
(because they all loved him), and his relations grieving around, he just laid
there as happy as a bug, and trying to beat time and showing all over how much
he enjoyed it; and presently he got worked up and excited; and tried to join
in, for mind you he was pretty proud of his abilities in the singing line; but
the first time he opened his mouth and was just going to spread himself, his
breath took a walk.I never see a man
snuffed out so sudden.Ah, it was a
great loss--it was a powerful loss to this poor little one-horse town.Well, well, well, I hain't got time to be
palavering along here--got to nail on the lid and mosey along with' him; and if
you'll just give me a lift we'll skeet him into the hearse and meander along.Relations bound to have it so--don't pay no
attention to dying injunctions, minute a corpse's gone; but if I had my way, if
I didn't respect his last wishes and tow him behind the hearse, I'll be cuss'd.I consider that whatever a corpse wants done
for his comfort is a little enough matter, and a man hain't got no right to
deceive him or take advantage of him--and whatever a corpse trusts me to do I'm
a-going to do, you know, even if it's to stuff him and paint him yaller and
keep him for a keepsake--you hear me!"

He cracked his whip and went lumbering away with his ancient
ruin of a hearse, and I continued my walk with a valuable lesson learned--that
a healthy and wholesome cheerfulness is not necessarily impossible to any
occupation.The lesson is likely to be
lasting, for it will take many months to obliterate the memory of the remarks
and circumstances that impressed it.

It would be but an ostentation of
modesty to permit such a pointed reference to myself to pass unnoticed.This is the second time that 'The Tribune'
(no doubt sincerely looking to the best interests of Spain and the world at
large) has done me the great and unusual honour to propose me as a fit person
to fill the Spanish throne.Why 'The
Tribune' should single me out in this way from the midst of a dozen Americans
of higher political prominence, is a problem which I cannot solve.Beyond a somewhat intimate knowledge of
Spanish history and a profound veneration for its great names and illustrious
deeds, I feel that I possess no merit that should peculiarly recommend me to
this royal distinction.I cannot deny
that Spanish history has always been mother's milk to me.I am proud of every Spanish achievement, from
Hernando Cortes's victory at Thermopylae down to Vasco Nunez de Balboa's
discovery of the Atlantic ocean;
and of every splendid Spanish name, from Don Quixote and the Duke of Wellington
down to Don Caesar de Bazan.However,
these little graces of erudition are of small consequence, being more showy
than serviceable.

In case the Spanish sceptre is pressed upon me--and the
indications unquestionably are that it will be--I shall feel it necessary to
have certain things set down and distinctly understood beforehand.For instance:My salary must be paid quarterly in advance.In these unsettled times it will not do to
trust.If Isabella had adopted this
plan, she would be roosting on her ancestral throne to-day, for the simple
reason that her subjects never could have raised three months of a royal salary
in advance, and of course they could not have discharged her until they had
squared up with her.My salary must be
paid in gold; when greenbacks are fresh in a country, they are too
fluctuating.My salary has got to be put
at the ruling market rate; I am not going to cut under on the trade, and they
are not going to trail me a long way from home and then practise on my
ignorance and play me for a royal North Adams Chinaman, by any means.As I understand it, imported kings generally
get five millions a year and house-rent free.Young George of Greece gets that.As the revenues only yield two millions, he has to take the national note
for considerable; but even with things in that sort of shape he is better fixed
than he was in Denmark, where he had to eternally stand up because he had no
throne to sit on, and had to give bail for his board, because a royal
apprentice gets no salary there while he is learning his trade.England is the place for that.Fifty thousand dollars a year Great Britain
pays on each royal child that is born, and this is increased from year to year
as the child becomes more and more indispensable to his country.Look at Prince Arthur.At first he only got the usual birth-bounty;
but now that he has got so that he can dance, there is simply no telling what
wages he gets.

I should have to stipulate that the Spanish people wash more
and endeavour to get along with less quarantine.Do you know, Spain keeps her ports fast
locked against foreign traffic three-fourths of each year, because one day she
is scared about the cholera, and the next about the plague, and next the
measles, next the hooping cough, the hives, and the rash? but
she does not mind leonine leprosy and elephantiasis any more than a great and
enlightened civilisation minds freckles.Soap would soon remove her anxious distress about foreign
distempers.The reason arable land is so
scarce in Spain
is because the people squander so much of it on their persons, and then when they
die it is improvidently buried with them.

I should feel obliged to stipulate that Marshal Serrano be
reduced to the rank of constable, or even roundsman.He is no longer fit to be City Marshal.A man who refused to
be king because he was too old and feeble, is ill qualified to help sick people
to the station-house when they are armed and their form of delirium tremens is
of the exuberant and demonstrative kind.

I should also require that a force be sent to chase the late
Queen Isabella out of France.Her presence there can work no advantage to Spain, and she
ought to be made to move at once; though, poor thing, she has been chaste
enough heretofore--for a Spanish woman.

I should also require that--

I am at this moment authoritatively informed that "The
Tribune" did not mean me, after all.Very well, I do not care two cents.

One calamity to which the death of Mr. Dickens dooms this
country has not awakened the concern to which its gravity entitles it.We refer to the fact that the nation is to be
lectured to death and read to death all next winter, by Tom, Dick, and Harry,
with poor lamented Dickens for a pretext.All the vagabonds who can spell will afflict the people with "readings"
from Pickwick and Copperfield, and all the insignificants who have been
ennobled by the notice of the great novelist or transfigured by his smile will
make a marketable commodity of it now, and turn the sacred reminiscence to the
practical use of procuring bread and butter.The lecture rostrums will fairly swarm with these fortunates.Already the signs of it are perceptible.Behold how the unclean creatures are wending
toward the dead lion and gathering to the feast:

"Reminiscences of Dickens."A lecture.By John Smith, who heard him read eight times.

"Remembrances of Charles
Dickens."A
lecture.By John Jones, who saw
him once in a street car and twice in a barber shop.

"Recollections of Mr. Dickens."A lecture.By John Brown, who gained a wide fame by
writing deliriously appreciative critiques and rhapsodies upon the great
author's public readings; and who shook hands with the great author upon
various occasions, and held converse with him several times.

"Readings from Dickens."By John White, who has the great delineator's
style and manner perfectly, having attended all his readings in this country
and made these things a study, always practising each reading before retiring,
and while it was hot from the great delineator's lips.
Upon this occasion Mr. W. will exhibit the remains of a cigar which he saw Mr.
Dickens smoke.This Relic is kept in a
solid silver box made purposely for it.

"Sights and Sounds of the Great
Novelist."A popular lecture.By
John Gray, who waited on his table all the time he was at the Grand Hotel, New
York, and still has in his possession and will exhibit to the audience a
fragment of the Last Piece of Bread which the lamented author tasted in this country.

"Heart Treasures of Precious Moments with Literature's
Departed Monarch." A lecture.By Miss Serena Amelia Tryphenia McSpadden,
who still wears, and will always wear, a glove upon the hand made sacred by the
clasp of Dickens.Only Death shall
remove it.

"Familiar Talks with the Great
Author."A
narrative lecture.By John Thomas, for two weeks his valet in America.

And so forth, and so on.This isn't half the list.The man
who has a "Toothpick once used by Charles Dickens" will have to have
a hearing; and the man who "once rode in an omnibus with Charles
Dickens;" and the lady to whom Charles Dickens "granted the
hospitalities of his umbrella during a storm;" and the person who
"possesses a hole which once belonged in a handkerchief owned by Charles
Dickens."Be patient and long-suffering, good people, for even this does not fill up
the measure of what you must endure next winter.There is no creature in all this land who has had any personal relations with the late Mr.
Dickens, however slight or trivial, but will shoulder his way to the rostrum
and inflict his testimony upon his helpless countrymen.To some people it is fatal to be noticed by
greatness.

I get old and ponderously respectable, only one thing will
be able to make me truly happy, and that will be to be put on the Venerable
Tone-Imparting committee of the city of New York, and have nothing to do but
sit on the platform, solemn and imposing, along with Peter Cooper, Horace
Greeley, etc., etc., and shed momentary fame at second hand on obscure
lecturers, draw public attention to lectures which would otherwise clack
eloquently to sounding emptiness, and subdue audiences into respectful hearing
of all sorts of unpopular and outlandish dogmas and isms.That is what I desire for the cheer and
gratification of my gray hairs.Let me
but sit up there with those fine relics of the Old Red Sandstone Period and
give Tone to an intellectual entertainment twice a week, and be so reported,
and my happiness will be complete.Those
men have been my envy for long, long time.And no memories of my life are so pleasant as
my reminiscence of their long and honorable career in the Tone-imparting
service.I can recollect that first time
I ever saw them on the platforms just as well as I can remember the events of
yesterday. Horace Greeley sat on the right, Peter Cooper on the left, and
Thomas Jefferson, Red Jacket, Benjamin Franklin, and John Hancock sat between
them.This was on the 22d of December,
1799, on the occasion of the state' funeral of George Washington in New York.It was a great day, that--a great day, and a
very, very sad one.I remember that
Broadway was one mass of black crape from CastleGarden
nearly up to where the City Hall now stands.The next time I saw these gentlemen officiate was at a ball given for
the purpose of procuring money and medicines for the sick and wounded soldiers
and sailors.Horace Greeley occupied one
side of the platform on which the musicians were exalted, and Peter Cooper the
other.There were other Tone-imparters
attendant upon the two chiefs, but I have forgotten their names now.Horace Greeley, gray-haired and beaming, was
in sailor costume--white duck pants, blue shirt, open at the breast, large
neckerchief, loose as an ox-bow, and tied with a jaunty sailor knot, broad
turnover collar with star in the corner, shiny black little tarpaulin hat
roosting daintily far back on head, and flying two gallant long ribbons.Slippers on ample feet, round spectacles on
benignant nose, and pitchfork in hand, completed Mr.Greeley, and
made him, in my boyish admiration, every inch a sailor, and worthy to be the
honored great-grandfather of the Neptune he
was so ingeniously representing.I shall
never forget him.Mr. Cooper was dressed
as a general of militia, and was dismally and oppressively warlike.I neglected to remark, in the proper place,
that the soldiers and sailors in whose aid the ball was given had just been
sent in from Boston--this
was during the war of 1812.At the grand
national reception of Lafayette,
in 1824, HoraceGreeley sat on the right and Peter Cooper to the left.The other Tone-imparters of the day are
sleeping the sleep of the just now.I
was in the audience when Horace Greeley Peter Cooper,
and other chief citizens imparted tone to the great meetings in favor of French
liberty, in 1848.Then I never saw them
any more until here lately; but now that I am living tolerably near the city, I
run down every time I see it announced that "Horace Greeley, Peter Cooper,
and several other distinguished citizens will occupy seats on the
platform;" and next morning, when I read in the first paragraph of the
phonographic report that "Horace Greeley, Peter Cooper, and several other
distinguished citizens occupied seats on the platform," I say to myself,
"Thank God, I was present."Thus I have been enabled to see these substantial old friends of mine
sit on the platform and give tone to lectures on anatomy, and lectures on
agriculture, and lectures on stirpiculture, and lectures on astronomy, on
chemistry, on miscegenation, on "Is Man Descended from the Kangaroo?"
on veterinary matters, on all kinds of religion, and several kinds of politics;
and have seen them give tone and grandeur to the Four-legged Girl, the Siamese
Twins, the Great Egyptian Sword Swallower, and the Old Original Jacobs.Whenever somebody is to lecture on a subject
not of general interest, I know that my venerated Remains of the Old Red
Sandstone Period will be on the platform; whenever a lecturer is to appear whom
nobody has heard of before, nor will be likely to seek to see, I know that the
real benevolence of my old friends will be taken advantage of, and that they
will be on the platform (and in the bills) as an advertisement; and whenever
any new and obnoxious deviltry in philosophy, morals, or politics is to be
sprung upon the people, I know perfectly well that these intrepid old heroes
will be on the platform too, in the interest of full and free discussion, and
to crush down all narrower and less generous souls with the solid dead weight
of their awful respectability. And let us all remember that while these
inveterate and imperishable presiders (if you please) appear on the platform
every night in the year as regularly as the volunteered piano from Steinway's
or Chickering's, and have bolstered up and given tone to a deal of questionable
merit and obscure emptiness in their time, they have also diversified this
inconsequential service by occasional powerful uplifting and upholding of great
progressive ideas which smaller men feared to meddle with or countenance.

The Richardson-McFarland jury had been out one hour and
fifty minutes. A breathless silence brooded over court and auditory--a silence
and a stillness so absolute, notwithstanding the vast
multitude of human beings packed together there, that when some one far away
among the throng under the northeast balcony cleared his throat with a
smothered little cough it startled everybody uncomfortably, so distinctly did
it grate upon the pulseless air.At that
imposing moment the bang of a door was heard, then the shuffle of approaching
feet, and then a sort of surging and swaying disorder among the heads at the
entrance from the jury-room told them that the Twelve were coming.Presently all was silent again, and the
foreman of the jury rose and said:

"YourHonor and Gentleman:We,
the jury charged with the duty of determining whether the prisoner at the bar,
Daniel McFarland, has been guilty of murder, in taking by surprise an unarmed
man and shooting him to death, or whether the prisoner is afflicted with a sad
but irresponsible insanity which at times can be cheered only by violent
entertainment with firearms, do find as follows, namely:

"1.His great grandfather's stepfather was tainted with insanity, and
frequently killed people who were distasteful to him.Hence, insanity is hereditary in the family.

"2.For nine years the prisoner at the bar did not adequately support
his family.Strong
circumstantial evidence of insanity.

"3.For nine years he made of his home, as a general thing, a
poor-house; sometimes (but very rarely) a cheery, happy habitation; frequently
the den of a beery, drivelling, stupefied animal; but never, as far as
ascertained, the abiding place of a gentleman.These be evidences of insanity.

"4.He once took
his young unmarried sister-in-law to the museum; while there his hereditary
insanity came upon him to such a degree that he hiccupped and staggered; and
afterward, on the way home, even made love to the young girl he was
protecting.These are the acts of a
person not in his right mind.

"5.For a good while his sufferings were so great that he had to
submit to the inconvenience of having his wife give public readings for the
family support; and at times, when he handed these shameful earnings to the
barkeeper, his haughty soul was so torn with anguish that he could hardly stand
without leaning against something.At
such times he has been known to shed tears into his sustenance till it diluted
to utter inefficiency.Inattention of
this nature is not the act of a Democrat unafflicted in mind.

"6.He never spared expense in making his wife comfortable during her
occasional confinements.Her father is
able to testify to this.There was
always an element of unsoundness about the prisoner's generosities that is very
suggestive at this time and before this court.

"7.Two years ago the prisoner came fearlessly up behind Richardson in the dark,
and shot him in the leg.The prisoner's
brave and protracted defiance of an adversity that for years had left him
little to depend upon for support but a wife who sometimes earned scarcely
anything for weeks at a time, is evidence that he would have appeared in front
of Richardson and shot him in the stomach if he had not been insane at the time
of the shooting.

"8.Fourteen months ago the prisoner told Archibald Smith that he was
going to kill Richardson.This is insanity.

"9.Twelve months ago he told Marshall P. Jones that he was going to
kill Richardson.Insanity.

"10.Nine months ago he was lurking about Richardson's
home in New Jersey, and said he was going to
kill Richardson.Insanity.

"11.Seven months ago he showed a pistol to Seth Brown and said that
that was for Richardson.He said Brown testified that at that time it
seemed plain that something was the matter with McFarland, for he crossed the
street diagonally nine times in fifty yards, apparently without any settled
reason for doing so, and finally fell in the gutter and went to sleep.He remarked at the time that McFarland acted
strange--believed he was insane. Upon
hearing Brown's evidence, John W. Galen, M.D., affirmed at once that McFarland
was insane.

"12.Five months ago, McFarland showed his customary pistol, in his
customary way, to his bed-fellow, Charles A. Dana, and told him he was going to
kill Richardson
the first time an opportunity offered.Evidence of insanity.

"13.Five months and two weeks ago McFarland asked John Morgan the
time of day, and turned and walked rapidly away without waiting for an answer. Almost indubitable evidence of insanity.And--

"14.It is remarkable that exactly one week after this circumstance,
the prisoner, Daniel McFarland, confronted Albert D. Richardson suddenly and
without warning, and shot him dead.This
is manifest insanity. Everything we know of the prisoner goes to show that if
he had been sane at the time, he would have shot his victim from behind.

"15.There is an absolutely overwhelming mass of testimony to show
that an hour before the shooting, McFarland was ANXIOUS AND UNEASY, and that
five minutes after it he was EXCITED.Thus the accumulating conjectures and evidences of insanity culminate in
this sublime and unimpeachable proof of it.Therefore--

"Your Honor and Gentlemen--We the jury pronounce the
said Daniel McFarland INNOCENT OF MURDER, BUT CALAMITOUSLY INSANE."

The scene that ensued almost defies description.Hats, handkerchiefs and bonnets were
frantically waved above the massed heads in the courtroom, and three tremendous
cheers and a tiger told where the sympathies of the court and people were.Then a hundred pursed lips were advanced to
kiss the liberated prisoner, and many a hand thrust out to give him a
congratulatory shake--but presto! with a maniac's own quickness and a maniac's
own fury the lunatic assassin of Richardson fell upon his friends with teeth
and nails, boots and office furniture, and the amazing rapidity with which he
broke heads and limbs, and rent and sundered bodies, till nearly a hundred
citizens were reduced to mere quivering heaps of fleshy odds and ends and
crimson rags, was like nothing in this world but the exultant frenzy of a
plunging, tearing, roaring devil of a steam machine when it snatches a human
being and spins him and whirls him till he shreds away to nothingness like a
"Four o'clock" before the breath of a child.

The destruction was awful.It is said that within the space of eight minutes McFarland killed and
crippled some six score persons and tore down a large portion of the City Hall
building, carrying away and casting into Broadway six or seven marble columns
fifty-four feet long and weighing nearly two tons each.But he was finally captured and sent in
chains to the lunatic asylum for life.

(By late telegrams it appears that this is a
mistake.--Editor Express.)

But the really curious part of this whole matter is yet to
be told.And that is, that McFarland's
most intimate friends believe that the very next time that it ever occurred to
him that the insanity plea was not a mere politic pretense, was when the verdict
came in.They think that the startling
thought burst upon him then, that if twelve good and true men, able to
comprehend all the baseness of perjury, proclaimed under oath that he was a
lunatic, there was no gainsaying such evidence and that he UNQUESTIONABLY WAS
INSANE!

Possibly that was really the way of it.It is dreadful to think that maybe the most
awful calamity that can befall a man, namely, loss of reason, was precipitated
upon this poor prisoner's head by a jury that could have hanged him instead,
and so done him a mercy and his country a service.

POSTSCRIPT-LATER

May 11--I do not expect anybody to believe so astounding a
thing, and yet it is the solemn truth that instead of instantly sending the
dangerous lunatic to the insane asylum (which I naturally supposed they would
do, and so I prematurely said they had) the court has actually SET HIM AT
LIBERTY.Comment is unnecessary.M.T.

No battle has been fought yet.But hostilities may burst forth any week.

There is tremendous excitement here over news from the front
that two companies of French soldiers are assembling there.

It is rumoured that Austria is arming--what with, is
not known.

.......................

Second Day

THE EUROPEAN WAR

NO BATTLE YET!

FIGHTING
IMMINENT.

AWFUL EXCITEMENT.

RUSSIA SIDES WITH PRUSSIA!

ENGLAND
NEUTRAL!!

AUSTRIA NOT ARMING.

BERLIN,
Wednesday.

No battle has been fought yet.However, all thoughtful men feel that the
land may be drenched with blood before the Summer is
over.

There is an awful excitement here over the rumour that two
companies of Prussian troops have concentrated on the border.German confidence remains unshaken!!

There is news to the effect that Russia
espouses the cause of Prussia
and will bring 4,000,000 men to the field.

England
proclaims strict neutrality.

The report that Austria is arming needs confirmation.

.........................

Third Day

THE EUROPEAN WAR

NO BATTLE YET!

BLOODSHED IMMINENT!!

ENORMOUS EXCITEMENT!!

INVASION OF PRUSSIA!!

INVASION OF FRANCE!!

RUSSIA SIDES WITH FRANCE.

ENGLAND
STILL NEUTRAL!

FIRING HEARD!

THE EMPEROR TO TAKE COMMAND.

PARIS,
Thursday.

No battle has been fought yet.But Field Marshal McMahon telegraphs thus to
the Emperor:

"If the Frinch army survoives until
Christmas there'll be throuble. Forninst this fact it would be sagacious
if the divil wint the rounds of his establishment to prepare for the occasion,
and tuk the precaution to warrum up the Prussian depairtment a bit agin the
day.

MIKE."

There is an enormous state of excitement here over news from
the front to the effect that yesterday France
and Prussia
were simultaneously invaded by the two bodies of troops which lately assembled
on the border.Both armies conducted
their invasions secretly and are now hunting around for each other on opposite
sides of the border.

Russia
espouses the cause of France.She will bring 200,000 men to the field.

England
continues to remain neutral.

Firing was heard yesterday in the direction of Blucherberg,
and for a while the excitement was intense.However the people reflected that the country in that direction is
uninhabitable, and impassable by anything but birds, they became quiet again.

The Emperor sends his troops to the field with immense
enthusiasm.He will lead them in person,
when they return.

.....................

Fourth Day

THE EUROPEAN WAR!

NO BATTLE YET!!

THE TROOPS GROWING OLD!

BUT BITTER STRIFE IMMINENT!

PRODIGIOUS EXCITEMENT!

THE
INVASIONS SUCCESSFULLY ACCOMPLISHED

AND THE INVADERS SAFE!

RUSSIA SIDES
WITH BOTH SIDES

ENGLAND
WILL FIGHT BOTH!

LONDON,
Friday.

No battle has been fought thus far, but a million impetuous
soldiers are gritting their teeth at each other across the border, and the most
serious fears entertained that if they do not die of old age first, there will
be bloodshed in this war yet.

The prodigious patriotic excitement goes on.In Prussia, per Prussian telegrams, though contradicted
from France.In France, per French telegrams, though
contradicted from Prussia.

The Prussian invasion of France was a magnificent
success.The military failed to find the
French, but made good their return to Prussia without the loss of a single
man.The French invasion of Prussia is also
demonstrated to have been a brilliant and successful achievement.The army failed to find the Prussians, but
made good their return to the Vaterland without bloodshed, after having invaded
as much as they wanted to.

There is glorious news from Russia to the effect that she will
side with both sides.

Also from England--she
will fight both sides.

....................

LONDON, Thursday evening.

I rushed over too soon.I shall return home on Tuesday's steamer and wait until the war
begins.M. T.

There has been so much talk about the mysterious "wild
man" out there in the West for some time, that I finally felt it was my
duty to go out and interview him.There
was something peculiarly and touchingly romantic about the creature and his
strange actions, according to the newspaper reports.He was represented as being hairy,
long-armed, and of great strength and stature; ugly and cumbrous; avoiding men,
but appearing suddenly and unexpectedly to women and children; going armed with
a club, but never molesting any creature, except sheep, or other prey; fond of
eating and drinking, and not particular about the quality, quantity, or
character of the beverages and edibles; living in the woods like a wild beast,
but never angry; moaning, and sometimes howling, but never uttering articulate
sounds.

Such was "Old Shep" as the papers painted
him.I felt that the story of his life
must be a sad one--a story of suffering, disappointment, and exile--a story of
man's inhumanity to man in some shape or other--and I longed to persuade the
secret from him.

.....................

"Since you say you are a member of the press,"
said the wild man, "I am willing to tell you all you wish to know.Bye and bye you will comprehend why it is
that I wish to unbosom myself to a newspaper man when I have so studiously
avoided conversation with other people.I will now unfold my strange story.I was born with the world we live upon, almost.I am the son of Cain."

"What?"

"I was present when the flood was announced."

"Which?"

"I am the father of the Wandering Jew."

"Sir?"

I moved out of range of his club, and went on taking notes,
but keeping a wary eye on him all the while.He smiled a melancholy smile and resumed:

"When I glance back over the dreary waste of ages, I
see many a glimmering and mark that is familiar to my memory.And oh, the leagues I have travelled! the things I have seen! the events
I have helped to emphasise!I was at the
assassination of Caesar.I marched upon Mecca with Mahomet.I was in the Crusades, and stood with Godfrey
when he planted the banner of the cross on the battlements of Jerusalem.I--"

"One moment, please.Have you given these items to any other journal? Can I--"

"Silence.I was in the Pinta's shrouds with Columbus when America burst upon his vision. I
saw Charles I beheaded.I was in London when the Gunpowder
Plot was discovered.I was present at
the trial of Warren Hastings.I was on
American soil when the battle of Lexington was
fought when the declaration was promulgated--when Cornwallis surrendered --When
Washington
died.I entered Paris
with Napoleon after Elba.I was present when you mounted your guns and
manned your fleets for the war of 1812--when the South fired upon Sumter--when Richmond
fell--when the President's life was taken.In all the ages I have helped to celebrate the triumphs of genius, the
achievements of arms, the havoc of storm, fire, pestilence, famine."

"Your career has been a stirring one.Might I ask how you came to locate in these
dull Kansas
woods, when you have been so accustomed to excitement during what I might term
so protracted a period, not to put too fine a point on it?"

"Listen.Once I
was the honoured servitor of the noble and illustrious" (here he heaved a
sigh, and passed his hairy hand across his eyes) "but in these degenerate
days I am become the slave of quack doctors and newspapers.I am driven from pillar to post and hurried
up and down, sometimes with stencil-plate and paste-brush to defile the fences
with cabalistic legends, and sometimes in grotesque and extravagant character
at the behest of some driving journal.I
attended to that Ocean Bank robbery some weeks ago, when I was hardly rested
from finishing up the pow-wow about the completion of the Pacific Railroad;
immediately I was spirited off to do an atrocious, murder for the benefit of
the New York papers; next to attend the wedding of a patriarchal millionaire;
next to raise a hurrah about the great boat race; and then, just when I had
begun to hope that my old bones would have a rest, I am bundled off to this
howling wilderness to strip, and jibber, and be ugly and hairy, and pull down
fences and waylay sheep, and waltz around with a club, and play 'Wild Man'
generally--and all to gratify the whim of a bedlam of crazy newspaper
scribblers?From one end of the
continent to the other, I am described as a gorilla, with a sort of human
seeming about me--and all to gratify this quill-driving scum of the
earth!"

"Poor old carpet bagger!"

"I have been served infamously, often, in modern and
semi-modern times. I have been compelled by base men to create fraudulent
history, and to perpetrate all sorts of humbugs.I wrote those crazy Junius letters, I moped
in a French dungeon for fifteen years, and wore a ridiculous Iron Mask; I poked
around your Northern forests, among your vagabond Indians, a solemn French
idiot, personating the ghost of a dead Dauphin, that the gaping world might
wonder if we had 'a Bourbon among us'; I have played sea-serpent off Nahant,
and Woolly-Horse and What-is-it for the museums; I have interviewed politicians
for the Sun, worked up all manner of miracles for the Herald, ciphered up
election returns for the World, and thundered Political Economy through the
Tribune.I have done all the extravagant
things that the wildest invention could contrive, and done them well, and this
is my reward--playing Wild Man in Kansas
without a shirt!"

In a moment the Wild Man's features seemed to soften and
refine, and his form to assume a more human grace and symmetry.His club changed to a spade, and he
shouldered it and started away sighing profoundly and shedding tears.

"Whither, poor shade?"

"TO DIG UP THE BYRON FAMILY!"

Such was the response that floated back upon the wind as the
sad spirit shook its ringlets to the breeze, flourished its shovel aloft, and
disappeared beyond the brow of the hill.

What a sad thing it is to see a man close a grand career
with a plagiarism in his mouth.Napoleon's last words were: "Tete d'armee." (Head
of the army.)Neither of those
remarks amounts to anything as "last words," and reflect little
credit upon the utterers.

A distinguished man should be as particular about his last
words as he is about his last breath.He
should write them out on a slip of paper and take the judgment of his friends
on them.He should never leave such a
thing to the last hour of his life, and trust to an intellectual spirit at the
last moment to enable him to say something smart with his latest gasp and
launch into eternity with grandeur.No--a man is apt to be too much fagged and exhausted, both in body and
mind, at such a time, to be reliable; and maybe the very thing he wants to say,
he cannot think of to save him; and besides there are his weeping friends
bothering around; and worse than all as likely as not he may have to deliver his
last gasp before he is expecting to.A
man cannot always expect to think of a natty thing to say under such
circumstances, and so it is pure egotistic ostentation to put it off.There is hardly a case on record where a man
came to his last moment unprepared and said a good thing hardly a case where a
man trusted to that last moment and did not make a solemn botch of it and go
out of the world feeling absurd.

Now there was Daniel Webster.Nobody could tell him anything.He was not afraid.He could do something neat when the time
came.And how did it turn out?Why, his will had to be fixed over; and then
all the relations came; and first one thing and then another interfered, till
at last he only had a chance to say, "I still live," and up he went.

Of course he didn't still live, because he died--and so he
might as well have kept his last words to himself as to have gone and made such
a failure of it as that.A week before that fifteen minutes of calm reflection would have enabled
that man to contrive some last words that would have been a credit to himself
and a comfort to his family for generations to come.

And there was John Quincy Adams.Relying on his splendid abilities and his
coolness in emergencies, he trusted to a happy hit at the last moment to carry
him through, and what was the result?Death smote him in the House of Representatives, and he observed,
casually, "This is the last of earth."The last of earth!Why "the last of earth" when there
was so much more left?If he had said it
was the last rose of summer or the last run of shad, it would have had as much
point in it.What he meant to say was,
"Adam was the first and Adams is the last
of earth," but he put it off a trifle too long, and so he had to go with
that unmeaning observation on his lips.

And there we have Napoleon's "Tete d'armee."That don't mean
anything. Taken by itself, "Head of the
army," is no more important than "Head of the police."And yet that was a man who could have said a
good thing if he had barred out the doctor and studied over it a while.Marshal Neil, with half a century at his
disposal, could not dash off anything better in his last moments than a poor
plagiarism of another man's words, which were not worth plagiarizing in the
first place."The
French army."Perfectly irrelevant--perfectly
flat utterly pointless.But if he
had closed one eye significantly, and said, "The subscriber has made it
lively for the French army," and then thrown a little of the comic into
his last gasp, it would have been a thing to remember with satisfaction all the
rest of his life.I do wish our great
men would quit saying these flat things just at the moment they die.Let us have their next-to-the-last words for
a while, and see if we cannot patch up from them something that will be more
satisfactory.

The public does not wish to be outraged in this way all the
time.

But when we come to call to mind the last words of parties
who took the trouble to make the proper preparation for the occasion, we
immediately notice a happy difference in the result.

There was Chesterfield.Lord Chesterfield had laboured all his life
to build up the most shining reputation for affability and elegance of speech
and manners the world has ever seen.And
could you suppose he failed to appreciate the efficiency of characteristic
"last words," in the matter of seizing the successfully driven nail
of such a reputation and clinching on the other side for ever?Not he.He prepared himself. He kept his eye on the clock and his finger on his
pulse.He awaited his chance.And at last, when he knew his time was come,
he pretended to think a new visitor had entered, and so, with the rattle in his
throat emphasised for dramatic effect, he said to the servant, "Shin
around, John, and get the gentleman a chair."And so he died, amid thunders of applause.

Next we have Benjamin Franklin.Franklin, the author of Poor Richard's quaint
sayings; Franklin the immortal axiom-builder, who used to sit up at nights
reducing the rankest old threadbare platitudes to crisp and snappy maxims that
had a nice, varnished, original look in their regimentals; who said,
"Virtue is its own reward;" who said, "Procrastination is the
thief of time;" who said, "Time and tide wait for no man" and
"Necessity is the mother of invention;" good old Franklin, the Josh
Billings of the eighteenth century--though, sooth to say, the latter transcends
him in proverbial originality as much as he falls short of him in correctness
of orthography.What sort of tactics did
Franklin
pursue?He pondered over his last words
for as much as two weeks, and then when the time came, he said, "None but
the brave deserve the fair," and died happy.He could not have said a sweeter thing if he
had lived till he was an idiot.

Byron made a poor business of it, and could not think of
anything to say, at the last moment but, "Augusta--sister--Lady
Byron--tell Harriet Beecher Stowe"--etc., etc.,--but Shakespeare was ready
and said, "England expects every man to do his duty!" and went off
with splendid eclat.

And there are other instances of sagacious preparation for a
felicitous closing remark.For instance:

Joan of Arc said, "Tramp, tramp, tramp the boys are
marching."

Alexander the Great said, "Another of those Santa Cruz punches, if
you please."

The Empress Josephine said, "Not for Jo-" and
could get no further.

Cleopatra said, "The Old Guard dies, but never
surrenders."

Sir Walter Raleigh said, "Executioner, can I take your
whetstone a moment, please?" though what for is not clear.

John Smith said, "Alas, I am the last of my race."

Queen Elizabeth said, "Oh, I would give my kingdom for
one moment more --I have forgotten my last words."

And Red Jacket, the noblest Indian brave that ever wielded a
tomahawk in defence of a friendless and persecuted race, expired with these
touching words upon his lips,
"Wawkawampanoosucwinnebayowallazvsagamoresa-skatchewan."There was not a dry eye in the wigwam.

Let not this lesson be lost upon
our public men.Let them take a healthy
moment for preparation, and contrive some last words that shall be neat and to
the point.Let Louis Napoleon say,

"I am content to follow my uncle--still, I do not wish
to improve upon his last word.Put me
down for 'Tete d'armee.'"

And Garret Davis, "Let me
recite the unabridged dictionary."

And H. G., "I desire, now, to say a few words on
political economy."

And Mr. Bergh, "Only take part of me at a time, if the
load will be fatiguing to the hearse horses."

And Andrew Johnson, "I have been an alderman, Member of
Congress, Governor, Senator, Pres--adieu, you know the rest."

And Seward., "Alas!-ka."

And Grant, "O."

All of which is respectfully submitted, with the most
honorable intentions.

M. T.

P. S.--I am obliged to leave out the illustrations.The artist finds it impossible to make a
picture of people's last words.